


It Was Cold in Boston

by colls



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 14:58:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1161049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/pseuds/colls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>written for the prompt: <i>Harper, life in Boston</i> @ http://smallfandomfest.livejournal.com/</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Was Cold in Boston

“I don’t care what you have to do, Harper. Get the sensors back online before we head out. We need to see what we’re heading into and we’re leaving for the Gradius system in two hours,” Dylan said over the comm.

“No one ever cares,” Harper muttered. “Harper do this, Harper do that, Harper pull a rabbit out of your hat.” 

Andromeda’s hologram appeared in his machine shop. “The comm system is still active, Harper.”

“So?”

“Dylan can hear you.”

“Good!” Harper scowled at the ceiling before he grabbed a scanner from the workbench and marched out of the room. 

“You’re not even wearing a hat,” the hologram called after him before fading out of focus and disappearing.

Sometimes Harper missed Boston. Oh, he didn’t miss everything about it, that’s for sure. He didn’t miss the hunger, the fear. He missed being appreciated though. Although he never had a lot of opportunity to flex his skills in Boston, he was still rather resourceful. Resourceful enough that his family appreciated it. His friends appreciated it. Even random strangers who lived under the subway appreciated it… except for that one time.

 

*********

Harper was still a teenager and seemingly immune to a lot of the hardships life handed out; ones like the Magog and the Nietzscheans were things to be wary of - ones like hunger and thirst were just a part of life. He hadn’t worried about mother nature before, but it was an unusually cold winter. 

Brendan’s friend Jonas had convinced the gang that lived beneath Roxbury Crossing to let them winter there. Roxbury Crossing was near a Nietzschean base, living right under their noses in the subterranean spaces were a couple hundred humans. So Steve, Brendan, Harper and Jonas hunkered down with a ragged collective of unaltered humans shivering and surviving (barely) under the old subway station.

The gang had to scramble further and further to find combustible material that would keep the steel barrels burning with enough warmth to keep the areas above freezing. They used to leech power off a Nietzschean maintenance shed, but it had been destroyed in a Magog attack last year. The new buildings had power routed through a different sub-station and no one in Roxbury was sure where it was.

Jonas had volunteered the four friends for different shifts of scavenging, arguing that their willingness to be broken up showed a certain trustworthiness. Besides, they only had two spartan bunks between them, so working it out in shifts made the most sense. 

Returning from chores, Brendan rushed in on a blast of cold air, crowding Harper and jostling Steve out of position to get to the warmth. 

“You can bet your ass the damned ubers are nice and warm over in that guard station,” Brendan muttered rubbing his hands vigorously over the flames.

Steve elbowed his way back to the front, “Why don’t you go sit with them, then?”

Harper half listened to the continued banter as he stamped his feet, trying to keep his blood flowing. Visions of power generators and manufactured heat danced through his head. 

“Earth to Seamus,” Brendan gently cuffed him on the back of the head.

“It’s where they bypass the transistors!” 

“What?”

Harper looked around at the gathering crowd. “We need a map. Where’s Jonas?”

An hour later, the four friends were standing around a table in one of the old maintenance rooms with several of the Roxbury gang. Pointing at a map of the neighborhood above ground, the gang argued about a two-story brick building just outside the Nietzschean compound. It used to be a bank, or maybe a bagel shop - no one was sure. Today it worked much like a sub-station for routing power from the main line to the various outbuildings within the Nietzschean camp. 

“I’m telling you, they don’t use the south side entrance anymore,” one of the gang members said, “and it was a _Bank_. It says so right on the front, engraved and everything.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Harper tried to keep himself from throttling the guy. Before he could speak, Brendan offered the guy a solution. “Why don’t we take one night and scope it out? Do some recon and confirm?”

“You want to stake out the old bank building? At night? In this cold?” 

Brendan nodded, “A small team, four of us should be able to cover all the angles from this street,” he turned to Harper, “You got more of those crystal hand warmers?”

“I can make a couple. I’ll need more sodium acetate and some sturdy plastic pouches.”

The good people of Roxbury refused to be left out, and decided the pair that had been bickering about the historical uses of the building would go along. Jonas and Steve volunteered to stay behind.

The two from Roxbury weren’t as adept at stealth as Harper and Brendan were, they zagged when they should’ve zigged and crouched in plain sight. Harper wondered how they’d managed to stay alive this long. Thankfully, it was dark and no one was patrolling the area. 

With luck on their side and under the cover of darkness, they managed to stake out the building on the corner of Madison and First. After three hours, they’d seen no movement at the south entrance. 

“Look, no one is coming. Can we just get this over with?” Harper asked.

“Ubers have been known to run irregular perimeter sweeps,” Brendan said.

“Maybe. But I’m not coming back out here a second time with this crew. They’re this jumpy on recon, think of how twitchy they’ll be if we have to come back. Besides, I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

“Do you have the stuff?” 

“Transformers, splicers and power cables - check, check and check.”

Brendan looked up the street and considered the two from the Roxbury gang. One was the guy who was convinced the building used to be a bank, the other a young woman who thought it was a bagel shop. Even from the other end of the block, Brendan could see they had their fingers on their triggers and a wild look of panic in their eyes. 

“Okay,” he whispered, “I’ll tell them we’re going to take a closer look and have them stay put. You go around the other side where they won’t see you.”

“Tell them to put their safeties on while you’re at it. I don’t want one of them to shoot me in the ass.”

Unencumbered by nervous lackeys, Harper slipped into the building through a window. Ten minutes later he had scurried to the basement and was running cables into the ancient sewer system that would eventually wind its way to Roxbury.

An hour later they returned to the subterranean shelter to a round of applause. All the lights were on and someone had plugged in some music. It was still cold and the place still looked dreary, but the power they’d managed to steal took the edge off.

The rest of the night was filled with a small amount of drinking and some awkward dancing while people gathered around makeshift tables and socialized. Brendan and Harper, being congratulated with hearty back slaps and high fives, felt like the guests of honor.

After unsuccessfully flirting with a brunette, Brendan joined Harper who had been coerced into a friendly game of cards.

“Have you seen Steve or Jonas?” he asked.

“Not since we got back,” Harper replied.

The next morning, Harper and Brendan were roused from their sleep and tossed out of the shelter at gunpoint. It seemed that while Harper and Brendan had been helping the Roxbury gang gain access to the power grid, Steve and Jonas had been helping themselves to food rations before disappearing for parts unknown. 

Protests that they had nothing to do with it fell on deaf ears. With only the clothes on their back, Harper and Brendan were shoved out into the cold. Winter had only just begun and a couple hundred Nietzscheans stood between them and other human settlements. They’d almost died that winter. It was the first time Harper could recall that the enemy wasn’t Nietzschean or Magog. 

 

*********

 _Okay, so maybe that sucked worse that today sucks._ Harper flexed his hands, recalling the frostbite that’d nearly cost him a couple fingers. He still hated the cold.

He tossed his bag of tools through the open access panel near engineering and crawled in after it. Dragging it along with him he made his way to the sensor relay. He briefly considered letting one of the Marias fix it, but they took even longer than he did to maneuver through these tunnels. Besides, if you want a job done right, it’s best to do it yourself. 

Harper began to repair the sensors when he heard the sound of scampering coming from the opposite end of the tunnel. His first thought was of sewer rats until he remembered he wasn’t in Boston anymore. A moment later, Rommie’s head popped out from around the corner. 

“Want some help?” she asked. 

Harper thought of all the things he loved about this warship - it was much more than just warmth, regular meals and the lack of sewer rats. He handed her the scanner and decided today didn’t suck so much after all.

~end.


End file.
